Absorption effects in elastic and inelastic diffraction

Recently, significant progress has been achieved in the analysis of the s channel structure of diffraction processes and it has become clear that elastic and inelastic diffractive processes are closely inter-dependent and should not be treated separately. Results of recent work on the relationship between the elastic and the inelastic diffractive processes and on the constraints which a channel unitarity imposes on the b space profiles of the diffractive amplitudes are summarized. It is shown that the unified description of elastic and inelastic diffractive channels allows one to modify many ideas about the diffractive scattering. The global inelastic contribution (when evaluated in the proper scale) appears to be very large, suggesting rather unexpected behaviour of the spectrum of eigenamplitudes to which the physical particles couple. The results suggest important deviations from the standard eikonal analysis and from the asymptotic predictions derived in the models neglecting inelastic diffraction. This approach, if pursued further, should constitute a step forward towards better understanding of strong interactions. (U.K.)